FOR TODAY’S Data A Day, we take a peek at the politics in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Since the ARMM was created by virtue of Republic Act 6734 in August 1989, a select number of families have dominated the local elections in Muslim Mindanao. Scholars say this is hardly surprising, given the traditional influence of Mindanao’s royal families over their communities that have historical been their constituencies.

However, with government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front preparing to sign a comprehensive agreement for peace that would pave the way for the creation of a BangsaMoro regional government, the ARMM as a political entity would soon be a thing of the past. The question that remains, however, is whether the families of old, the clans that have held sway, not just throughout the short history of the ARMM but through the centuries of the rule of the Datus, would still emerge as the dominant political figures in the BangsaMoro.

For today’s Data A Day, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s Research section used a word cloud generator to give us a quick and clearly visible answer to the question of which political families have dominated ARMM’s elections. The word cloud generator gives greater prominence, in terms of size, to words that appear more frequently in a document. For purposes of the word cloud below, the PCIJ used the list of official candidates in the last eight elections in the ARMM, as supplied by the Commission on Elections.

And as anyone can see below, one name stands out very prominently in the word cloud.

For more details on the political clans that have ruled the ARMM, visit the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics website, or go straight to the site’s Data A Day site.

FOR TODAY’S Data A Day, we take a peek at the politics in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Since the ARMM was created by virtue of Republic Act 6734 in August 1989, a select number of families have dominated the local elections in Muslim Mindanao. Scholars say this is hardly surprising, given the traditional influence of Mindanao’s royal families over their communities that have historical been their constituencies.

However, with government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front preparing to sign a comprehensive agreement for peace that would pave the way for the creation of a BangsaMoro regional government, the ARMM as a political entity would soon be a thing of the past. The question that remains, however, is whether the families of old, the clans that have held sway, not just throughout the short history of the ARMM but through the centuries of the rule of the Datus, would still emerge as the dominant political figures in the BangsaMoro.

For today’s Data A Day, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s Research section used a word cloud generator to give us a quick and clearly visible answer to the question of which political families have dominated ARMM’s elections. The word cloud generator gives greater prominence, in terms of size, to words that appear more frequently in a document. For purposes of the word cloud below, the PCIJ used the list of official candidates in the last eight elections in the ARMM, as supplied by the Commission on Elections.

And as anyone can see below, one name stands out very prominently in the word cloud.

For more details on the political clans that have ruled the ARMM, visit the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics website, or go straight to the site’s Data A Day site.